


hope is a dangerous thing

by some_stars



Series: children's work [4]
Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: (yes you can), Can You Pet The Raven?, F/M, Infant Death, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Singing, Stillbirth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:42:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25999195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/some_stars/pseuds/some_stars
Summary: "Go on then," she said to Geralt, who wouldn't look at her. "Tell me what terrible thing you've done."He flinched, and for a moment she wanted to take it back—swear him to silence, so that they could just go on in peace, so that she would never have to know.But her curse was that she always wanted to know, whatever the price, and she said nothing as he took a deep breath and began to speak."When we first met," he said slowly. "The djinn...and my last wish...""You wished to save me.""Yes, but—" He shook his head. "My wish was about...about us."(In which Geralt finally tells Yennefer about the djinn wish, she makes some poor or possibly good decisions, and the raven is more than it seems.)
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: children's work [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1807540
Comments: 99
Kudos: 569
Collections: break the awkward come undone





	hope is a dangerous thing

**Author's Note:**

> I know I said the next part would be Geralt POV, but I did not count on Yenn having so much to say. I promise the NEXT one will be Geralt-centric, because it really is his turn. And at least this one didn't take three months! :D? :D? 
> 
> Thank you ten million billion trillion times to [spirographeme](https://spirographeme.tumblr.com/) again, who saved this story at two crucial points; it would not exist without them. Thanks also to the MANY people who looked it over at various points and soothed me and had great suggestions. 
> 
> Title is from [Lana Del Rey](https://youtu.be/rY2LUmLw_DQ).

Yennefer woke the first morning to a warm, slightly less populated bed than she'd fallen asleep in. Geralt was gone—she reached out with her mind and found him nearby, and the spark of anxiety settled. And Jaskier lay beside her, awake and propped up against the headboard, scribbling on a scrap of parchment. 

He glanced over at her as she stirred and smiled. His face was still pale, drawn with faint lines of pain, but the smile was real enough. "Do you always sleep so late?" he asked. "It suits you. The decadent sorceress, late to bed and late to rise."

Here in the light of morning, sharing a bed with Jaskier felt less simple and clear. She yawned hard enough to crack her jaw and quickly pushed back the covers and stood. "I'm surprised to see you awake," she said. "I hope you didn't try to get up."

He shook his head, grimacing. "The game did not seem worth the candle, considering I still feel more liquid than man inside. Geralt brought me some food, though I confess I only picked at it. And—" He gestured at the parchment. "Some entertainment to take my mind off things."

She brushed her dress down, smoothing out the wrinkles, though after three nights sleeping in it the task was rather hopeless. There was an edge in Jaskier's voice that bothered her. "You're in pain," she said, and he shrugged and nodded.

"Nothing unbearable," he said, and gave her a thin smile. "But, ah, if there's something you could do for it, I wouldn't say no."

Her reserves had regenerated a little overnight, but only a small amount. It would be wisest not to use any magic for something so frivolous, but the lines around his mouth disturbed her all out of proportion to their severity. "Just a little," she said, and knelt on the bed and reached out to touch his shoulder, closing her eyes and murmuring a few words. It _was_ just a little spell, the sort of thing she'd use to take the edge off a bad headache. But it seemed to help, judging from his long exhale and the way his shoulders relaxed.

"Gods, thank you," he said, his smile brightening. "That's a relief."

"I can't do any more right now," she muttered, standing back up. "So enjoy it while it lasts."

She left him to his scribbling and humming and went to join Geralt, finding him sitting in the kitchen, eating a leg of a roast chicken she'd had tucked away—in her absence, of course, it hadn't spoiled—with a spread of salami, bread, cheese, and fruit in front of him waiting to be eaten. 

"Well," she said, "your appetite hasn't suffered. Let me take a look at your wound."

"It's fine," he muttered around a mouthful of chicken. "You know how witchers heal."

"I don't, actually. I've never seen you so badly injured, and the minimal education I received on healing didn't include witchers. Now let me see it."

He grumbled, but sat back from the table and lifted his shirt. She unwrapped the bandages and raised her eyebrows, unable to hold back her surprise. Of course she'd known that witchers healed fast—when they'd been imprisoned, Geralt had recovered from his initial wound quickly—but this one had been worse, and she could still feel the echo of panic that had seized her the night before as she'd worked on it. The skin wasn't fully scarred over, but the wound was mostly closed, the bandages only a little bloody. There was no pus, of course; witchers didn't get infected, and thank the gods for that.

"How does it feel?" she asked. "Any internal damage?"

"Guts aren't quite back to normal, but they will be." He pulled his shirt back down. "I told you, it's fine." Chicken leg now vanished down to the bone, he tore off a hunk of bread. "Once I get some more food in me it'll heal all the way up."

"Can't say the same for Jaskier," she said, and he looked up at her, alarmed. "Not that he's not healing," she added quickly. "But it'll take some time. Did he actually eat anything this morning?"

Geralt sighed and shook his head. "Swallowed one bite of bread and made a face like it was poison."

"Let me guess," she said. "You didn't have the heart to make him eat anything else."

The way Geralt shifted uncomfortably was almost adorable, if that word could be used for a witcher. "He said it hurt to eat," he muttered, not meeting her eyes.

She snorted. "I knew you were a pushover, Geralt, but honestly."

Unsurprisingly, he didn't dignify that with a response, but instead took a sizeable bite out of his salami.

When Geralt was finished eating, he went and carried Jaskier into the kitchen, seating him in the one chair that had arms to help him stay upright. Yennefer made up a plate for him—a piece of chicken, a slice of bread, a handful of strawberries—and set it in front of him with a stern glare. Jaskier looked at the repast with a queasy expression.

"Eat," she told him sharply. "As much as you can, or you won't heal."

"I just...are you sure you put all my insides back together? Because my stomach feels distinctly...unmoored." He nibbled at a slice of bread as he spoke, however. 

"You're still injured, if that's what you're asking," she said. "But your body can heal itself from this point, if you give it the energy it needs." She didn't add that she had, at present, absolutely no further help she could give him; lessening his pain had drained nearly all the magic she'd been able to regenerate overnight. The spell she'd used to kill Thydonis had used almost all of her built-up power, and the portal and healing afterward had finished her off. It would be days before she had her full abilities back, another reason her mind balked at the idea of leaving the two of them alone.

They ate—Jaskier as much as he could, Geralt everything he couldn't, and Yennefer found herself starving as well. They all three had run their reserves dry, one way or another. The chicken was particularly satisfying and she devoured almost everything Geralt and Jaskier had left. Roasting one whole was about the extent of her culinary capabilities, but this one she had bought in town the day before she had left. There were a few women in town who sold her prepared food, all with a motherly look in their eyes as though they had forgotten she was a powerful sorceress, and saw only a young woman bereft of the skills a mother ought to have taught her. Not that she hadn't helped her mother in the kitchen when she was young, of course—it had been one of the few tasks she could easily do—but that had been a long, long time ago. She didn't mind the way the women looked at her; it kept them from charging her as much as they ought to for their labor, and they often threw in a free tart or some other treat.

She would have to go into town today and buy more food, now that there were three of them. The thought of leaving Geralt and Jaskier—Jaskier especially, who was still pale and had needed to be carried like a bride from the bed to the kitchen—gave her a pang, but she ignored it.

At Geralt's request, Yennefer used the last of her magic to send the raven with a message to the innkeeper in Chesna to continue caring for Roach and Jaskier's horse—Pegasus, Jaskier informed her with a ludicrous degree of solemnity—as well as their belongings until they could retrieve it all, at which time he would be paid accordingly. She had never sent it anywhere further than town before, but the magic would hold, and it was faster than a real bird.

Jaskier watched with interest as she exchanged words with the thing—giving it its orders, nodding as it affirmed them, then opening the door and setting it loose. It flew off almost faster than she could track with her eyes, leaving a faint trail of black smoke behind it.

"Is that bird alive?" Jaskier asked, once it was gone. "I mean, it talks. Is it...a person?"

"It's a raven," she said; the line of questioning made her uncomfortable. "I mean, it's a spell. I made it. It's not a person."

"It thanked you," Jaskier said. "That seems to imply some sort of...person-ness."

She shook her head sharply, shutting the door. "It's just a spell. And it'll be back tomorrow. When you're well again, we can go get your things."

Geralt, who had been sipping some tea that he'd made pathetically weak, looked up. "Is it safe for you to go back there?"

She shrugged. "I don't see why not. I killed anyone who posed a threat to me."

"You didn't kill Herewold," Geralt said, and Jaskier stiffened. Of course; he'd been less than conscious at the time and would hardly have noticed.

"You didn't? Why on earth not? The man tried to have you killed." He sounded outraged entirely on her behalf, with no thought for his own near-mortal injuries.

"Herewold's no threat," Yennefer said. "If anything, he'll be desperate to make it up to me." She snorted. "He'll probably ask me to lift the curse in earnest this time. Gods know he's doomed if he can't fix it."

"Well," Jaskier said, sounding personally injured, "he should have thought of that before trying to _kill_ you." 

Afterward Geralt helped Jaskier back to bed and stayed with him for some time; for lack of anything else to do that didn't require magic, Yennefer went out back to her garden and got to work. It was almost fully restored by now, but it was a garden, and there was always something to do. She found the cat sitting in her celandine and half-heartedly shooed it, which only had the effect of making it follow her about, winding around her ankles and purring until she stroked it.

With her fingers in the dirt she didn't notice the time passing, and Geralt's voice behind her startled her for a moment, stiffening her back.

"Sorry," he said gruffly. "I forgot you get like this when you're gardening."

She felt her face grow hot for no reason at all. "It's fine." She turned around to face him and put on a smile. "What is it?"

"You have a library somewhere in this place?" He shifted from foot to foot, looking almost embarrassed to be asking. "I could do with something to read."

Her smile turned real. "Jaskier not holding up his end of the conversation?"

Geralt snorted. "He's asleep, so, no."

"I would have thought him the type to talk in his sleep." She stood, shaking the dirt from her hands. "He certainly has enough to say when he's awake."

The look that crossed Geralt's face was unabashedly fond, and it occurred to Yennefer that she had seen it directed at her, once or twice, usually as Geralt was falling asleep. It didn't seem—appropriate, somehow, for the full light of day. At least not on his face.

She told herself, _You're not going to feel jealous over something you could have if you just asked for it,_ and led him to the library. "It's mostly books about magic," she said as he looked around, clearly delighted. "Not sure how much you'll get out of it."

But he was already running his fingers over the shelves, neck craned to read the spines, and she left him to it.

When she went to look in on Jaskier a bit later, she found him awake with a notebook and pen lying on the bed beside him. His eyes widened and he beamed at the sight of her.

"Yennefer! Come to keep me company?" He patted the space beside him invitingly.

"Come to check you're still alive," she said, but she went and sat down anyway, picking up the notebook and flipping through it. She saw him tense out of the corner of her eye and paused. "Is it private?"

He relaxed with visible effort. "No, no. Just...unfinished. Unpolished. Not the finest example of my capabilities as a poet."

"Poetry, hmm?" She glanced at the pages, and indeed, they were filled with verse, rhyming lines marching across the page. "For a song?"

"As I am unfortunately deprived of my instrument for the time being," he said, with a note of real longing in his voice, "it's just poetry. Hard to compose without music."

He looked truly dejected at the thought of his absent lute, and it plucked some string within her. "You know," she said, "I have an old vielle around here somewhere, if you can play that."

His face brightened immediately. "A vielle! I'm not quite the virtuoso that I am with a lute, but I certainly know my basics. If you would lend it to me, I would be forever in your debt."

"I saved your life," she pointed out. "You're already forever in my debt. But you can have it." She went to the closet and rummaged around the chest inside until she found the thing in its case. It had been a reward—tossed in alongside the coin—for one of the first jobs she'd done after leaving Aedirn, and some sentimental urge had kept her from selling it all these years.

She handed the case to Jaskier and he opened it and took out the vielle and bow with delicate fingers, a warm smile spreading across his face. "Oh, aren't you a beauty," he murmured, sounding as enchanted as any young man courting a lover.

Jaskier shuffled himself up to sitting with a grimace and a pained huff of breath, then set the vielle beneath his chin and ran the bow across it a few times, testing. The squawking that filled the air was less than musical.

"Ah, a little out of practice, aren't we," he cooed, and adjusted the pegs and tried again. This time it worked; a rich-toned note rang out, warm as sunshine. Jaskier launched into a song—something even Yennefer could tell was a child's piece, simple and repetitive, but pleasant enough to listen to. The dreamy look on Jaskier's face was pleasant too, and she wondered if he had missed music as much as she had missed her magic. She doubted it, but the thought made her fonder of him all the same.

She sat and listened, and he went on to more complicated pieces, missing a note here and there. Eventually the sound of it fetched Geralt, who poked his head inside and then closed his mouth on the question he'd been about to ask, only standing there listening for the next few minutes. Jaskier didn't seem to notice him, or anything at all, stopping only when he was evidently exhausted. Then he looked up and smiled in tired delight at his audience.

"Didn't know you could play that," Geralt said, as Jaskier laid the vielle and bow carefully back in its case.

"Oh, I can play most anything," Jaskier said, "if you don't want it played too well. Of course, you can't sing while playing the vielle, so it's of limited use as a bard." He yawned, wincing a little and putting a hand to his chest as it expanded, but the pain didn't seem to last long. "Maybe it's the restoring power of music," he said, "but I could eat something more now, I think."

With a start, Yennefer realized the day was well into the afternoon. The hours had slipped by so easily—so peacefully. "There's not much left," she said, "but Geralt can get you something while I go into town for more." Again came the pang of worry, almost panic, at leaving them alone; again she grit her teeth against it. There was nowhere safer they could be, and if Jaskier needed magical help it wasn't as though she could currently provide it, present or absent.

She took her basket and hurried out, walking at a quick pace into town, but it tired her after a few minutes and she slowed down. It wasn't a long walk, but before long she regretted leaving her cloak; the weather was turning now, winter closing in. The trees had long since gone red and yellow, and by now several of them had lost their leaves.

Ordinarily she would simply whisper a spell to warm herself, but when she reflexively tried, it hurt all over like pressing on a bad bruise. She set her jaw and kept walking into the wind.

In town she hurried through her business, buying meat pies, more bread and cheese, a few sweetcakes and apples, and another chicken. There must have been something cold and hard in her demeanor, or some of her battened-down anxiety showed through, because none of the women who supplied her tried to make small talk beyond the barest niceties. None of them threw in an extra tart, either, but that was all right; money was one thing she didn't need to worry about.

The days were shortening, and she made it back just before sunset. When she crossed the threshold the warmth of the house wrapped around her like a blanket, and she relaxed her shoulders that had hunched up around her ears. Geralt and Jaskier sat at the kitchen table waiting for her, and she wondered if they had felt as anxious about letting her out of their sight as she had them. There was no reason for it, of course; she hadn't been nearly killed in front of their eyes. Still, they both relaxed visibly as she entered and set her packages on the table.

It was pleasant, she thought, to come home to someone. Had she really, in all her long life, never done it before?

She slept with them again that night, and wondered if she would feel uncomfortable or out of place now that they were no longer in extremis—enough that she put off going to bed, pottering around the kitchen aimlessly reorganizing ingredients for half an hour before getting up the nerve to go join Geralt and Jaskier in bed. As she opened the door she heard a plaintive miaowing, and the cat immediately leapt off the bed and ran to wind around her legs.

"Oh, thank the gods," Jaskier said, yawning. "It's been screaming since it came in here. I think it wants you."

Sure enough, the cat kept purring around her ankles as she pulled off her dress, which had not been comfortable to sleep in last night when she was exhausted and would certainly be even less so tonight. Clad only in her shift, she wondered briefly if Jaskier might have something to say, but apparently the cat's silence was all he had needed to drift off, wrapped around Geralt like a snoozing barnacle.

Geralt, who had seen her in far less, watched quietly as she slipped under the covers, then blew out the candle. She lay in the darkness, not touching either of them but warmed by their bodies nonetheless, and fell asleep without much trouble.

—

The next few days passed in much the same manner as the first, as her magic slowly but steadily flowed back into her—gardening, reading, the quavering voice of the vielle filling every room as Jaskier spent more and more of his days awake. Geralt spent half his hours in the library, and she joined him sometimes, reading some treatise or another without her former focus, just exploring her accumulated knowledge for the pleasure of it.

Geralt's nearness also soothed her, and they took to reading aloud to each other, sharing interesting tidbits of history, in his case, or magical theory, in hers. On the sixth day he found a bestiary, and spent all afternoon chuckling over the illustrations and calling her over to look at them as he pointed out the various errors.

It was one of those moments, when she sat down on the sofa next to him to page through the book in his lap, their shoulders pressed together, that she felt the old familiar wave of desire—though there was something fresh and untried about it, after so long apart—and turned to look at him, and found her want reflected on his own face.

They were kissing before she could think twice about it, the bestiary falling to the floor with a thump as Geralt twisted toward her, one hand on her head and the other slipping around her waist. For a minute she lost herself in the sensation of his lips on hers, his tongue brushing hungrily against her own.

When she pulled away to breathe, panting against Geralt's cheek, heart racing, a thought occurred to her and she sat back. "Jaskier?"

Geralt's mouth, lips still parted, crooked up at the corner. "He keeps asking me when you and I are going to get around to fucking again."

"Now, I think," she said, and pressed him back against the cushions to kiss him again.

They didn't bother to undress, and it was fast—tugging at skirts and belt buckles, almost like their first time. It felt new, too—not just the way he filled her, touched her, but the look in his eyes, open and hopeful and then fulfilled, and the whole time just out there for her to watch. She leaned forward, planting one hand on his chest and stroking his face with the other, gasping when he sucked her fingers into his mouth and caressed them with his tongue. They'd done so many things together, but somehow that minor act had been missed, and she felt a deep, fierce curl of satisfaction at doing something _new_ with him.

It was over too soon, both of them pent-up and starving for each other, a starvation she had only now noticed and couldn't feed fast enough. When he finished, not long after she did, she let him slip out of her and fell forward onto his chest, his shirt rough against her face as she listened to his heartbeat slow back down to its usual glacial pace. When his arms came up to encircle her she felt so safe it embarrassed her to think about it, and that, at least, was just like every time before.

She had felt safe when they were little, when he held her hand as they ran through the city streets, fleeing some mischief or another—a purloined bit of candy, a rude face made at a sour professor. He'd never run too fast for her, his hand never tugging impatiently but only holding, warm and small like hers, fingers laced together. They'd been far too young to be sweethearts, of course, but Geralt's childhood friendship had been no small thing. It had been as though some part of her recognized him despite not remembering him; she had trusted him almost immediately, and he her, though neither of them had been given much reason to trust anyone.

She wasn't a child now, of course, and she didn't trust anyone wholly, except maybe the cat. Its loyalties were simple and pure—it loved whoever fed it. She met its limited needs, and in return it favored her with affection, and that was all. Geralt was far more complicated; the thought of him _needing_ her gave her stomach an uneasy lurch.

And, of course, there was Jaskier now. What might he need from her? What could she possibly give him? And what did she want in exchange?

—

It was the next day when she walked in on the two of them talking in low voices that fell to silence immediately upon her entry and left Jaskier looking guilty and Geralt suspiciously blank—the second time she'd found them like that.

"Is there something I should know?" she asked, a twinge of jealousy biting at her—or, not so much jealousy as a self-conscious fear. It was late morning; the sun shone bright through the windows, one of those clear and cloudless late autumn days where the sun warmed your skin and the air stole the heat away in equal measure. She had been out for a walk, not heading into town but through the outskirts of the woods behind the house, enjoying the biting air and the chance to catch her breath alone for a while.

"Yes, actually," Jaskier said, and looked at Geralt, who seemed to freeze in place under his pointed gaze. "Geralt has something to tell you."

"Not yet," Geralt said—to Jaskier, not to her. "We were going to wait..."

"I'm healed enough to travel," Jaskier said, and then, when Geralt looked at him doubtfully, "well, if we take it easy. And you can't put this off any longer. It might make you very angry," he said, looking at Yennefer now, his face set in serious lines. "Just...let him explain? And then, if you want us to go..." His voice trailed off and he looked rather lost. His hands twisted together anxiously for a moment before he nodded and hauled himself up with only a small groan. "I'll give you some privacy, then."

Geralt watched him leave the room with a tinge of panic in his eyes. Yennefer tried to think of what Geralt could tell her that would make her angry and came up with nothing, or nothing meaningful—nothing worth this introduction. Her heart beat faster as she stood there, and her chest felt tight.

"Go on then," she said to Geralt, who wouldn't look at her. "Tell me what terrible thing you've done."

He flinched, and for a moment she wanted to take it back—swear him to silence, so that they could just go on in peace, so that she would never have to know. 

But her curse was that she _always_ wanted to know, whatever the price, and she said nothing as he took a deep breath and began to speak.

"When we first met," he said slowly. "The djinn...and my last wish..."

"You wished to save me."

"Yes, but—" He shook his head. "My wish was about...about us."

Every small detail in the kitchen—the grain of the wooden walls, the shallow knife-marks on the countertop—suddenly seemed to stand out in sharp relief, every color unnaturally vibrant, every soft distant sound suddenly harsh and buzzing. She forced herself to breathe, acutely aware of her chest rising and falling.

"About us," she repeated, closing her eyes. The words felt heavy like stones in her mouth. She thought about every time a moony-eyed young man had asked her for a love potion, something to slip into a woman's drink and capture her affections for his own. She'd never sold them, herself; the thought made her skin crawl.

"Tell her what it _was,_ Geralt," came Jaskier's voice from the next room, dissipating any illusion that he wasn't listening in. He sounded—irritated, and worried beneath that. But not horrified. If Geralt had wished for her to love him against her will, Jaskier would surely be disgusted at the thought.

She clung to that hope as Geralt took a slow, deep breath before speaking. "I wished...you were going to die. And I wasn't thinking." He grimaced, and now he finally met her eyes. "I wished to tie our fates together. That you wouldn't be gone from my life."

Not for her love, then, not outright—and what a small blessing that was. Only to entwine their fates, to draw her close to him—no wonder they'd loved each other even as children, helpless to resist the pull of destiny. She felt the ghost of his small hand in hers—the ghost of his mouth on her fingers—but that was all it ever had been, after all. The ghost of something real, a puppet show put on by fate, with her the hollow puppet.

Yennefer felt a curtain of cold descend on her, as if the last two weeks had never happened. She took a step back, then another, almost stumbling.

"I'm going away," she said, words forming in her mind only as she spoke them, as though some deeper hidden part of her was speaking. "I have to—I have to go lift the curse. In Chesna. I'm going now."

At any other time, Geralt would have asked her if it was safe to go alone. She could tell he wanted to ask it now, but he set his jaw and only nodded.

"Take the raven," Jaskier said, shuffling back through the doorway and leaning on the frame. "So you can send a message if you need help."

"I—fine."Her hands twitched aimlessly at her sides. She needed—she didn't know. To go. To get out, out of this house where she'd welcomed them, made them at home.

She turned to go—her magic had started to return four days ago and she was at full power now. A portal there and back would be no problem; all she'd need would be her cloak and some coin—but she stopped halfway across the room when Jaskier said, very quietly into the dead silence, "Do you want us to leave?"

The answer should have been yes, without question. But she found her mouth open and useless, unable to say _yes_ or _no_.

"You're still healing," she said finally, aware that it wasn't an answer, and hurried away before he could press her for anything more definite. She grabbed a full purse from her desk in the library, summoned the raven to her fist, and went out the back door, casting the portal in the middle of the garden and almost running through it.

—

She arrived outside the Elver's Rest, because it was the location within the city walls that she knew the best. It took her a second to get her balance, her heart racing in her chest like a galloping horse. When she could breathe almost normally, she murmured a message to the raven and sent it off to find Herewold and deliver it—a request to meet her at the tavern, knowing exactly how much it would terrify him, taking a nasty pleasure in the thought of his fear. Then she went inside, ordered a drink, and sat down to wait, her hands still shaking around her mug.

The raven came back ten minutes later, and Herewold arrived within the hour. Yennefer had calmed herself by then, thankfully, or at least she'd shoved down the raw rage and hurt to where it no longer made her tremble, which was the same thing. She watched carefully as Herewold entered, but as far as she could tell he'd come alone, without even a guard, much less a mage. He was pale as death, and, she was pleased to note, trembling as he sat down opposite her when she beckoned him over, smiling pleasantly.

"I'm impressed," she said, and meant it. "Not many men would arrive so promptly to their own execution."

"Is that what this is?" he asked, sitting up a little straighter. She shook her head, abruptly tired of toying with him.

"If I wanted to kill you," she said, "I would have done it already. I'm here to lift your curse."

It was clear that that was the last thing he was expecting; his eyes widened, shocked and confused. "Why? Why would you—why would you do me a favor?"

Of course, she thought. Of course he would view it like that. He'd had decades of training to see the whole world as an interconnected network of debits and credits, of who owed him what and what inescapable debts he owed to others. She'd played that game once too, for thirty years, and it had nearly killed her—because no one, in the end, actually honored their debts. Not when you were no longer useful to them. She wondered if Herewold had learned that yet.

"I'm not doing it for you," she said coldly, and didn't say more, though he was obviously waiting for an explanation. Frankly she wasn't sure she could give him one.

Finally he seemed to relax a little, convinced he would survive the day. "I'd hoped it would just disappear when Thydonis died," he said, "but just yesterday I got word of another death, so that clearly hasn't happened." He sighed, shoulders slumping, the very picture of weariness. "Do you have a plan?"

"I need to get a feel for it," she said. "It hasn't reached the city yet. I need to go where it's happening."

"The most recent crop failures were in Parchfield," he offered. "There's only been one infant death so far, but by this point word has spread to all the villages in the region, and they're starting to panic."

She nodded. "Where is it?"

"A day's ride from here," he said. "Will I...ah, will I be accompanying you?" He certainly didn't look as if he wanted to—he looked like he would rather be as far from Yennefer as possible, maybe in another country—and she took a small, hard pleasure in nodding again and watching his face fall, before he controlled it back to perfect smoothness.

"I'll need a horse," she said, and rose to her feet, raven nestled on her shoulder. If she banished it now it would just return to her house, and anyway, it wasn't as if it weighed anything. She also enjoyed the way Herewold kept glancing at it nervously.

"Of course," he said. "I'll supply you with one from my own stables. If you'll follow me?" 

He led her through the city, moving gradually uphill towards the richer neighborhoods, until they finally arrived outside his home. It was modest by the standards of the palaces she'd visited, but had clearly been added on to over the years, and had the feel, if not the precise layout, of a fortress. 

Somewhere in there was the room he'd kept her in, and the thought made her ill. "Go on, then," she said, gesturing toward the stables. He nodded hastily and hurried off, returning a few minutes later riding one horse and leading another. She mounted without a word, and they rode off toward the city gates.

—

Parchfield was a small town, only a bit more than a village. They reached it in the late afternoon, and while not everyone they passed looked grim, there was a certain pall cast over the place; they knew something bad was coming for them, if not precisely what. There was one small inn that couldn't have had more than a couple rooms, and they stopped there, the innkeeper nodding a small bow to Herewold when they entered.

"You've returned, sir," he said. He was an older man, fully grey, with the kind of old age that had gone to paunch and jowl rather than bony thinness. The lines of his face suggested that, until recently, he had been a jolly sort.

"Yes," Herewold said. "I've brought someone to look at the problem." _The problem,_ that was a genteel way of putting it. _The wheat is blackening in the fields and your babies are born dead, it's really getting to be something of a problem._ "Ah, may I introduce—"

"No," she said sharply, cutting him off. He looked at her, confused and a little alarmed. "No one needs to know my name," she said. "Word gets around, and the last thing I want is some damned fool writing a song about me." It wasn't really the reason, but she couldn't articulate—didn't want to articulate why she felt so strongly that she needed to be anonymous. She only knew that nothing good could come from any of these people greeting her by name.

"Ah, very well," Herewold said awkwardly, after a long moment of silence. "Well, ah, this is...a powerful mage, who has generously offered to try and help with things."

The innkeeper bowed to her as well, then. "My lady," he said, eyes flickering to the raven on her shoulder, then back to her. She held still and said nothing more as the innkeeper assured Herewold he and his guest would have the best of accommodations; payment, of course, was not discussed. Herewold had his small bag brought up to his room and exchanged a few words with the innkeeper in a low voice, and then they left again out into the late afternoon sun, the deep golden light competing with the drawn and anxious faces they passed.

"What would you like to see first," he asked her, "the fields or the woman whose child died?"

Yennefer paused in the middle of the small town square. "I think...wait a moment." If a curse lay over the whole town, she should be able to feel it anywhere. She closed her eyes and reached out one hand, fingers twitching as she stretched out her perception towards the deeper layers of the world, where magic rested. She felt the usual currents of chaos, swirls and eddies, nothing unexpected. But every few seconds the pulse of magic energy was interrupted by something dark—something sour and rotten that she could _taste._ She tried to grasp at the dark spaces and pull them out—the image of extracting a rotten tooth came to mind—but they slipped from her fingers every time.

She opened her eyes and saw that a few townspeople were watching her, eyes wide.

"That was nasty," said the raven, and she almost jumped. She turned to look at it, but of course it was just a bird; it didn't have any kind of expression she could read. 

"Since when do you share your opinion?" she muttered under her breath, too low for Herewold to hear.

The raven cawed once, then said, "It tasted _bad._ "

There was something terribly unsettling about conversing with the dogsbody she'd created out of smoke, and she wished again that she could banish it. But she'd promised Jaskier she'd send a message if she needed help—not that she would—but still. She felt obscurely guilty at the thought of sending it away.

"Take me to the woman," she said. 

Herewold led her down one street, then another. Two of the people who'd been watching her in the square followed, and she let them; it wasn't as if they were a threat. He stopped at a small cottage and knocked on the door.

The girl who opened it was too young to be a mother, and she looked at them with confusion for a moment, until she glanced up and down at their clothes—and, Yennefer supposed, their bearing; neither could be mistaken for anything except nobility. Quickly, the girl bowed. "Can I help you, my lord?" she asked, her voice wavering a little.

"I'm here to see Virani," Herewold said, and the girl flinched. "It's nothing bad," he added, but she was shaking her head, her face tight with worry.

"I—I'm sorry, my lord, but my sister, she isn't well." She leaned closer to them and lowered her voice. "She lost her first babe but a few days ago, and she..." The girl bit her lip. "She isn't well," she repeated.

From deeper in the cottage, Yennefer heard the sound of singing, a high-pitched, almost ghostly tune. "That's why we're here," she said. "To stop that happening again. It would help if I could talk to your sister."

The girl looked between them for a minute, then finally pressed her lips together and sighed. "Come in, then," she said. "But please be kind to her. She...she can't really answer questions very well."

"She won't have to," Yennefer said. She tried to inject a note of soothing into her voice, but judging from the girl's frown, she wasn't very successful. They followed the girl back into the back room of the cottage, and Yennefer's eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness.

" _A golden cradle has the cat, but better is my baby's,_ " sang the woman lying on the bed, her head and shoulders propped up on a pile of pillows and another pillow, delicately embroidered, clutched to her chest. She glanced at Yennefer, but nothing seemed to catch her interest, and she kept singing. " _A soft, soft pillow has the cat, but softer is my baby's._ "

There was a wooden stool next to the bed; Yennefer crossed the small room and sat down. "Hello, Virani," she said quietly. Virani turned her head again, and smiled at her this time.

" _A warm, warm blanket has the cat,_ " she sang, and reached out to take Yennefer's hand. Startled, Yennefer let her, and Virani squeezed it unexpectedly tightly. " _But warmer is my baby's._ "

"She's mad with grief," Herewold said, his voice low and pained.

"The babe was born sickly," Virani's sister said, just as softly. "After the wheat started to die—we'd heard, from the other villages, what came next. But it was born alive, and we thought maybe—she thought it might live. But it wouldn't take much milk, and two days later..."

Virani started her song again, louder now. She still hadn't let go of Yennefer's hand.

"I'm going to look at the energy around you," Yennefer told her. She wasn't sure Virani could hear her, or understand her if she could, but it seemed right to explain. "I'll see if I can find what hurt your baby."

Virani kept singing, but her eyes were clear as she nodded, and fixed on Yennefer's. Yennefer took a deep breath and closed her eyes, and focused on Virani's hand in hers. Just like before, she reached out with her other sense; just like before, the taste of rot almost overwhelmed her. She set her jaw and kept reaching, feeling the flow of energy all around Virani's body. The blackness was lingering, but, she realized, it was mostly gone. The curse had come upon her and then left once it was done; all that remained were traces. She wouldn't find answers here.

With some difficulty, she extracted her hand from Virani's grip, and watched as the other woman's eyes glazed over again, staring into the distance as she wrapped her arms around her embroidered pillow again.

Yennefer walked back outside, blinking at the sudden light. As her eyes were adjusting, a woman—one of the ones who had watched her in the square, and followed her—approached her, face shining with hope and fear.

"You're here about the curse?" the woman asked, her voice almost shrill. "You're—you're a sorceress?"

Yennefer nodded, looking at her more closely. She stood with her hands clasped in front of her, looking more than anything like an anxious schoolgirl, but she was grown, if still young—mid-twenties, perhaps, face framed with wild dark curls.

"Can you—" The woman took a deep breath. "Can you check to see if my baby is still well? I'm sure I would know, I'd feel it, but—the curse—and what happened to Virani..." She pressed her hands to her stomach, which was rounded just a bit, Yennefer realized. Pregnant, but no more than halfway to due.

She hadn't meant to get this involved, but it was a simple enough matter. "All right," she said, and before she could begin to search for the little flicker of life a fetus gave off, the woman grabbed her hand and pressed it to her own stomach. It wasn't necessary, but explaining that seemed like more trouble than it was worth, so Yennefer focused on the warmth beneath her palm, stretching out her senses. She felt no trace of the curse, neither on the woman nor on the little life inside her.

"He's fine," she said, pulling her hand back. Immediately, the woman burst into tears, and Yennefer took an uneasy step back.

"Thank you," she sobbed, "thank you—it's only my second, I couldn't stand losing him—" She stopped suddenly, wiping her face and staring at Yennefer with wide eyes. "Did you say 'he'?"

"Yes, it's a boy. And he'll be born safe and well," she added impulsively, knowing it was a foolish promise to make, yet something drove her to say it. The woman started to weep again and fell to her knees, grabbing Yennefer's hand and kissing it.

"Thank you," she said. "Thank you for helping us. Thank you."

For a dreadful moment Yennefer just stood there frozen, feeling more and more stares come to rest on her and the woman kneeling before her, and had no idea what to do. Finally Herewold pulled her away, frowning, and she left the kneeling woman behind. Her hand was still damp with kisses, and she grimaced as she wiped it on her dress.

"Why don't we go look at the fields where the wheat failed," Herewold said, and walked quickly towards the edge of the town. He dropped her arm after a second, but kept up the fast pace, and when they had left the last of the watching townsfolk behind them he turned to her—still walking—and said, in a low and angry voice, "You shouldn't have promised her that."

Hearing him echo her own thoughts stung. "What does it matter?" she replied waspishly. "If I can't lift the curse, this town is going to wither and die. She'll have more to worry about than a dead baby then."

He stiffened, but didn't reply, and they walked the rest of the way out to the fields in silence. She saw the blight long before they got close—a huge swathe of blackened wheat stalks, bent and rotting on the ground. The wind carried their sickly-sweet scent to her as she approached.

"They say it just turned up like this one morning," Herewold said. "It was fine and healthy the day before, ready for harvest. And then..." He trailed off. She glanced at him, wondering how much of the furrowed worry on his face was for these people, and how much was for his own fate should all his lands quit producing. About half and half, she figured; he wasn't a terrible man, but he was ill-equipped to live as anything but what he was—a minor lord, more minor than he used to be, smart enough to rely on the guidance of others for his actual responsibilities but far more vulnerable than he realized. Although perhaps he realized it now.

The wheat, when she reached out to the energy around it, felt the same as Virani had—the ghost of a malevolent presence, a rotten-meat taste in her mouth that made the raven caw unhappily. There was nothing here to seize onto and pull out. It would spread to the rest of the wheat soon, she could tell, and maybe if she stood here and waited for that—but somehow she knew instinctively that wasn't the answer.

"You said this is the most recent place it's manifested," she said to Herewold, who nodded. "This isn't the heart of it, just—fingers. Tendrils. I need to go where it began."

Herewold turned pale, but nodded again. "It's another day's ride," he said. "We'll stay here tonight. If that's amenable to you," he added quickly. "I think it would be best if you were rested, first. What's left there is...unpleasant."

She raised her eyebrows. "You've been there?"

"Only once," he said. "I mean, since—since everyone was moved. When I still hoped Agnatha might be able to do something about the curse."

Yennefer snorted. "Agnatha was barely more than a hedge witch. She couldn't even kill a human man who was at her mercy."

"That sort of thing wasn't where her strengths lay," Herewold said stiffly, looking away, and Yennefer realized he was _mourning_ her. 

She couldn't help herself; a cold and disbelieving laugh burst from her chest, and Herewold flinched.

"I don't blame you for killing her," he said, eyes fixed straight ahead, "but she raised me. And she was very good to us."

"She was a murderer," Yennefer said, but her heart wasn't in it. The bitch was dead, and Jaskier and Geralt were well, and hating the dead was wearying.

They trudged back to the inn, where they were fed finer fare than Yennefer was used to at such establishments. She needn't have brought any coin after all; no one would dare charge their liege lord for food or accommodations.

She went up to her room after supper and lay down on the narrow bed. The raven perched on the nightstand, folding its head beneath one wing. She watched it closely for a minute, but it was perfectly still, no breath in its body. Not that it had a body, or ought to need rest. Still, she was glad it seemed to want to sleep rather than watch her all night.

Sleep eluded her for some time. The bed, small as it was, felt empty and cold. Of course, she'd grown accustomed to sharing—accustomed after only a week, which she shouldn't have allowed herself. She wouldn't have, if she'd been thinking clearly, but something about having the two of them there, safe under her watch—

With a quiet groan she rolled over again. The lumpy pillow wasn't doing her any favors, but she'd slept in far worse places before. Her idiot body just kept clamoring for Geralt's warmth, Jaskier's scent, an arm around her waist holding her secure. It had felt so good, so unspeakably good.

If she had been able to look forward to returning to that comfort, it might have been easier to fall asleep here, alone and just a little too cold under the quilt, though it was a heavy blanket, the bed clearly made with finer linens than usual in honor of the company she was currently keeping. But when she returned, it wouldn't be to an embrace and a shared bed. She should have told them to get out; she didn't know why she hadn't. She didn't know why she was _here,_ except that it had been the first way to gain distance she'd latched onto, and now she might as well see it through. But there was no return to the warmth of the three of them together in bed, no return to Jaskier's music ringing through the house, to Geralt's big hands delicate on her body until need took over and tightened his grip. All of that was gone. How could she go back to it, knowing it was built on false foundations?

 _Jaskier didn't make a wish, though,_ she thought, and pressed her face into the pillow and growled in frustration. There was no point in lying to herself now, here, alone—she wanted Jaskier in her life as much as she still, against her will, wanted Geralt. But she could hardly have one without the other. Jaskier was devoted to Geralt in a way Yennefer almost envied; they were a package deal. So either she had to cast them both out, and spend the rest of her life fighting the djinn-induced urge to go find Geralt, be near him, bask in him—or she had to give in and enjoy them as fully as she desired, knowing all the while that she was being puppeted as surely as if she were a paper marionette. 

She lay in bed, fists clenched, breathing hard and uneven, and thought uselessly in circles until some shallow semblance of sleep eventually took her, a few hours before dawn.

—

She slept later than she meant to— _the decadent sorceress,_ she heard Jaskier saying when Herewold knocked on her door to wake her.

"We should start," he said, voice muffled through the door that he sensibly didn't dare open. "It's a long ride."

She grumbled something back and rose quickly, muttering a quick spell to cleanse the sweat of a fitful night, and went down to breakfast. The porridge had fresh fruit in it, and honey, luxuries she was certain most of the people who stayed here weren't afforded. They set off wordlessly, Yennefer riding beside Herewold, and for several hours they didn't speak at all.

Around noon he stopped, and when she looked at him quizzically, he pulled out a loaf of bread from his bag. "I thought you might like lunch," he said. "Unless you've moved beyond such things, as a sorceress, but I wanted some."

She rolled her eyes and held out her hand; he tore off half the loaf and handed it to her, then followed it with a wedge of cheese. They rode slowly as they ate, and she realized she had been quite hungry after all. She felt an inexplicable urge to thank him but stifled it quickly, and silence descended once more.

He didn't speak again until the sun was low in the sky. "We're almost there," he said, his voice tight with what sounded like fear. "I wish...it would be better to look around during the day."

She raised her eyebrows. "Is it haunted?"

His shoulders hunched up. "I don't know about haunted. Certainly nothing concrete. But there's some kind of...presence, I think. I don't have much of a sense for this sort of thing, but I felt it, last time."

"Sounds exciting," she said, injecting a note of brightness into her voice purely for the way it made Herewold frown. Anyway, it was a good sign; if there was some kind of spectral presence here, it meant something for her to grab on to and manipulate, the way she hadn't been able to in Parchfield. It didn't even occur to her to be afraid. Nothing Thydonis had made could possibly defeat her.

They crossed over the blackened farmland and into what had once been a town a few minutes before sunset, and Yennefer felt it immediately—a cold blanket of mixed grief and hatred that settled onto her shoulders, making her shiver despite herself. Herewold let out a grunt of distress, clearly affected as well.

"Could you—could you make a light?" he asked in a small voice. She was glad he did; it gave her an excuse. With a flick of her fingers she conjured up a glowing ball that hovered in front of them, and saw his shoulders visibly relax a little.

They dismounted and tied their horses to one of the few remaining standing fenceposts. The state of disrepair of the buildings seemed too advanced for just five years or so of abandonment. Wood had rotted away as though it had suffered twenty seasons of storms, and in what once had been vegetable patches not even weeds grew.

Abruptly, the raven on her shoulder spoke up. "It's bad here."

She turned to look at it, startled. "What?"

The raven flapped its wings once in seeming distress. "Bad here. Death. It tastes so bad."

"Are you..." She hesitated to say it, but forced herself to ask. "Are you afraid?"

"Afraid," it repeated, and cawed mournfully.

Herewold, who had given the raven one cautious glance in the morning and taken no notice of it since, was staring at them both with wide eyes. "How smart is that thing?"

"Smarter than it's supposed to be," she said, eyeing it carefully. "I've never—it's never been outside for this long before."

"Well," Herewold said, "if the magical raven is afraid, I don't mind admitting that I am as well. Could you do what you need to do so we can get out of here?"

The raven nudged its head against her hair. "Want to get out," it agreed. Its voice sent a shiver down her spine—oddly childlike, for all its birdlike harshness.

Yennefer took a deep breath and walked a few dozen paces further into the center of the town, to what had once been the main square. The further she went, the harder it was to keep going, not out of fear but because the air seemed to turn to syrup around her, resisting her progress. She set her jaw and pushed forward, only stopping when she reached the center of the square.

The raven was shivering, she realized. Without giving it much thought, she reached up to stroke it. "Shhh," she said, "not much longer," and it quieted under her hand.

With a deep breath, she closed her eyes and opened her senses, bracing herself for a flood of bad energy. It still almost knocked her over when it came—the darkness whirling like a wild storm, resisting her every effort to grab hold of it and look at it more closely. She felt herself stagger a little under the rush, but regained her footing quickly and dove back in again. There were layers and shades to the waves of pain, once she was able to focus on them; it wasn't the undifferentiated mass it appeared to be.

She breathed, and concentrated, and eventually she started to hear voices.

 _Please don't, please, please don't hurt me—_ A woman sobbing, frantic. Her form took shape in Yennefer's mind—young, reddish-brown hair in a thick braid; tied hand and foot; heavily pregnant, almost ready to deliver.

 _Silence,_ and that voice she would know anywhere, would remember always. She could see him too now, looming over the woman, lit by flickering candles, knife in hand.

Yennefer opened her eyes and the visions fell away. The raven was trembling again; she plucked it from her shoulder and held it in her hands, stroking it. Then she turned around and walked back to the edge of town, where Herewold stood waiting, shivering himself. It was cold here, she realized, and as if her body had only just noticed it now, her teeth began to chatter.

"Well?" Herewold demanded, his voice thin. "Did you find—did you figure it out?"

She nodded. "Thydonis killed someone to cast the curse," she said. "A pregnant woman who was about to give birth. Two lives in one to make it more powerful."

Herewold flinched, squeezing his eyes shut. "I didn't know—Yennefer. If I'd known what he'd done, I would never have tried to work with him."

She shrugged, holding the raven a little tighter to her body. It _gave_ in a way a real bird wouldn't, but there was substance there, somehow, in the smoke. "He's dead now. It doesn't matter. Except..."

She looked down, but felt Herewold's gaze on her. "Except what?"

"A curse powered by blood energy," she said slowly, reluctantly. "The only way to lift it is...."

Silence sat heavily between them for a moment, until Herewold finally broke it. "More blood," he said, and his shoulders sagged as though a heavy weight had been suddenly laid on them. "You have to sacrifice someone."

Yennefer shook her head, more in frustration than denial. "It can't—there must be something else. I'm far more powerful than Thydonis was."

"It makes sense," Herewold said, and he sounded like he was trying to talk himself into something. "Blood for blood, it makes sense. And I can't...these are my people. My lands. I couldn't ask it of anyone else."

She did look up at him then, sharply. "What are you saying?"

His chest puffed out a little as he pulled his shoulders back, and it would have looked comical in any other context. "You have to kill someone to lift the curse," he said. "So kill me. It's my responsibility."

" _No,_ " she snapped, taking a step back, horror curling in her gut. "I'm not going to kill anyone and I'm certainly not going to kill you!"

"I'll do it myself," he said. His voice was shaking, but the light flaring in his eyes seemed unquenchable now. "I won't make you do it. But you said it yourself, the curse is powered by blood energy. By _two_ lives, no less. I already made the mistake of trying to sacrifice someone else to lift this curse, and I won't do it again." To her horror, he reached down into his boot and pulled out a little dagger. It was almost laughably small, but not so small it wouldn't serve to cut a throat. "I just—I need you to send a message to my son, let him know what's happened." He smiled weakly, fiddling with the jeweled hilt of the dagger. "He's a good man. He'll understand. He'd do the same, I hope."

Yennefer reached out and slapped the dagger from his hand; it fell to the dirt with a thud. He stared at her open-mouthed, about to protest, but she cut him off. "Shut up! Stop it! Just _stop!_ "

"But—"

Her next slap landed across his face, hard enough to snap his head to the side. " _No one is going to die for this,_ " she said, spitting the words out like nails. "Just let me do my damned _job_ and figure out a solution!"

He'd staggered under the blow, fallen to one knee, and now he looked up at her with wide eyes, blood trickling from one nostril. A few drops fell to the dirt, making a hissing sound, and Yennefer felt a strange sensation swirl around her—a sort of pulling that she couldn't put a name to—but when she shook her head it slipped away. She tried to regret hitting Herewold so hard and couldn't; at least he was properly afraid of her now.

"We need to get out of here," she said, controlling her voice. "The energy here—I can't think straight. And neither can you, obviously."

He nodded dumbly, then seemed to realize he was on his knees and hastily stood, wiping the blood from his lip. "Okay," he said, his voice quite small. "Okay. We'll—we'll go back to Parchfield."

They mounted and rode, and the relief when they finally escaped from the pall hovering over the ghost town was like a wave of cool water. Yennefer let out a loud, shaking sigh, rolling her shoulders back. Herewold, when she glanced at him, was also sitting up straighter, fighting back a yawn.

"Will you need help staying awake?" she asked. "I can make you less tired."

The yawn burst free loudly, and when it was done with him he nodded. "I'm no longer of an age to be staying up all night, unfortunately. Do what you must."

"It won't hurt," she said, not sure why she was reassuring him, and curled her fingers around the edge of his aura, pushing pulses of energy through them. He perked up immediately and even smiled.

"Thank you," he said. "That's much better."

"Well, I hardly want you falling off your horse," she said lightly, and touched her hand to her forehead to cast the same spell on herself, because she was wearier than she expected to be just from riding all day.

They rode in silence through the darkness, Yennefer maintaining her glowing orb in front of them so the horses, at least, wouldn't step wrong. It didn't cast much light, leaving Herewold wrapped in shadows, and she startled when after an hour or so he spoke.

"Thank you," he said. "For—for finding another way. If you can."

"I can," she said. "Do you doubt me?"

"Not at all," he said. "I don't doubt your intentions in the slightest. Let's just say I doubt whether the world will be as kind as you expect it to be."

She laughed at that—a little hysterically—couldn't stop herself. The _last_ thing she had ever expected of the world was that it would be _kind._ Who knew better than her what a childish, naive idea that was?

"Herewold," she said, her voice still light, "the world isn't kind. The world is monstrous and cruel, at best indifferent to our suffering, at worst delighting in it. I expect _nothing_ from the world, nor should you, though I wager this is the first time you've had to learn that."

She was smiling, she realized; she couldn't stop. It was as if she'd come to a realization long-awaited, one she'd struggled for years to comprehend, and the light of it filled her, every inch.

"But you think you can lift this curse without blood," Herewold said. 

"Without death," she said, thinking of that hissing sound, and just like that the final piece of it came to her. "With blood fed to the cursed earth, from the people of this land. Every last one of them."

Herewold drew in a sharp breath, and when he spoke, his voice tentative, she could hear the beginning of hope in it. "But just a drop."

"A thousand drops," she agreed. "Two thousand. Five thousand more from Chesna. The power of it is the same." She shook her head. "Thydonis needed my magic and my blood, but I'm stronger than him. The blood alone will do."

"Blood without death," chirped the raven happily, and she stroked its head, scratching under its feathers until it cooed. 

—

They made it back to Parchfield in the early hours of the morning, the rejuvenation spells worn off well before and both of them too exhausted even to eat before going straight to bed. When Yennefer rose, an hour before noon, she devoured a late breakfast—eggs this time, with runny yolks and toast, and two rashers of fatty bacon beside, and it was the finest thing she'd ever tasted.

Herewold joined her, bleary-eyed, and ate his own eggs. She waited for him to finish, then led him outside and towards the fields outside the village.

"I think perhaps we should discuss logistics," Herewold said, a little hesitantly. Yennefer had been planning the necessary spell to cast to harness all the blood's power and channel it—how to prepare the earth to receive the energy and ensure it all went to use—and his voice pulled her from her thoughts.

"Logistics?"

"Well," he said, looking uncomfortable. "It's all very well to say we'll take a drop of blood from every man, woman, and child living on my lands and feed it to the earth. The actual execution, however, is probably going to be something of an undertaking."

She shrugged. "You have men, don't you? Soldiers? Magistrates? People who carry out your orders?"

"These are very peculiar orders," he said. "But yes, I do."

"Well, then," she said. "Time for you to exercise some leadership skills."

He made a frustrated noise. "It's not about getting people to do what I want. It's about—do you realize how long this will take? Chesna especially, because the blight hasn't reached there. It'll be hard to convince folks to cooperate, and harder still to do it by force. I'll have to talk to the mayor—and there are a dozen more villages to visit. And I'm assuming you need to be there for the bleeding, and—"

"Fine," she said, cutting him off with a frown. "I get it, it's complicated." She thought of her house, where Jaskier and Geralt might still be waiting for her, if they hadn't yet decided to leave. "I don't want to spend any more time here than I have to. But there's no way around it—we need the blood if you want to lift the curse."

"Excuse me," said a small voice, startling her. She turned to look and saw the pregnant woman she'd spoken to the day before yesterday, the one to whom she had made a rash promise. "Is this...are you speaking of how to lift the blight from our town?"

"From every town," Yennefer said. "But yes, we are."

"And you need..." The woman bit her lip. "You need blood?"

"Just a little," Herewold said hastily. "A drop."

The woman lifted her chin, shoulders rolling back. "I can give you more than that, if it'll help."

"I—" Herewold seemed at a loss for words, and glanced at Yennefer questioningly. She shrugged.

"Fine," she said. "Come with us. We need to give the blood to the earth." 

The woman was silent the next couple of minutes as they walked out to the fields, her face taking on a grim cast as they beheld the swathe of blackened wheat. When Yennefer stopped them, she took a deep breath.

"How much do you need?" she asked. "Only—I don't want to hurt the baby, you know."

"Well, strictly speaking," Yennefer said, "we need all of it. But since that would kill you, why don't you just start with a few drops and see how you feel?" She pulled a dagger from her skirts and handed it over, hilt first.

The woman—whose name, Yennefer realized, she didn't know—took the dagger with a hand that trembled slightly, but held it in a solid grip, and Yennefer wondered who in this little town had taught her how to hold a knife for fighting. She glanced at both of them, then set her jaw and touched the blade to the top of her forearm, squeezing her eyes shut with a grimace before pressing it down and drawing it across, opening up a cut a couple inches wide. She hissed in pain but quickly held her arm out and squeezed it, watching her blood spatter down onto the dirt.

It didn't make a sound this time, but Yennefer almost fell to her knees from the ferocious wave of _relief_ that struck her, as the blackened, withered weight on her shoulders suddenly lifted. It was like the pulling sensation she'd felt with Herewold's blood, but a thousand times stronger, and she could have sworn the sun grew a touch brighter before her eyes.

The other two also felt it, she saw, though not as strongly. Herewold stood gaping at the wet spot in the dirt, while the woman's eyes widened and she breathed, "Did it work? Did it help?"

"It worked a _lot,_ " Yennefer said, feeling her balance come back to her as the world settled. 

"I felt it," Herewold said, his voice a little faint. "You said we'd need five thousand drops of blood. That was barely a thimbleful, why did it work so well?"

"I can give you more," the woman said eagerly, and started to squeeze her wound again. Yennefer grabbed her wrist and stopped her as the realization swept over her.

"Blood freely given," she said. " _Willingly._ The power of it..." She shook her head, still a little dazed. "Gods, we could do that a hundred times and be done with it. I wouldn't even need a spell, it's like—it's like the earth _wants_ to be healed."

"Of course it does," said the woman. "This blight is unnatural. Nature wants things back the way they should be."

Yennefer turned to her and took her arm again. The woman gave it to her trustingly, and she covered the wound with her other hand and murmured a few words, feeling it seal up under her fingers. "You don't have to give any more," she said. "We'll find others."

"I reckon the whole town would be willing," the woman said. "If you explained it to them, there's not a one of them wouldn't help."

It seemed far too easy a solution, like cheating at cheating, somehow. When was anything ever this easy? But no matter how Yennefer turned the plan over in her head, she couldn't find a trick or a flaw. 

"What's your name?" she asked the woman, who looked up at her as if she hadn't expected to be asked.

"Ellin," she said. "I'm Ellin, daughter of Morlan and Kath."

"Go on back to town, Ellin," Yennefer said. "Tell everyone what's happening, bring them out here."

Ellin nodded and turned and went, hitching her skirts up to her knees as she ran. As Yennefer watched her go, she felt the raven twitch on her shoulder and heard it caw, before it took brief flight and resettled itself on her hand, onyx eyes staring up at her.

"Yes?" she asked it. She felt a bit foolish inviting it to speak, but there was no denying that it was more voluble now than it used to be. "Anything you'd like to share?"

It ruffled its feathers a few times. "You're happy," it said, and she felt a pang of self-consciousness that was almost embarrassment.

"I'm pleased with my own cleverness," she said. "It's not the same thing."

"Happy," the raven insisted, and then, "I'm happy too."

Something about that struck her deep in her chest, like a bell ringing, and her half-smile faded. "Are you really?" she said. "Because you're not supposed to be, you know. When I made you, I didn't give you feelings."

"New," said the raven. "First lonely. Then scared. Now happy."

 _Lonely._ She thought of all the endless days, weeks, months she'd left the raven to watch her house, utterly alone. Of what it had said to her when she'd first returned— _you were gone a long time._ How she had reflexively banished it, and she wondered now what happened to it when she turned it back to smoke. If it...minded, being smoke.

She realized, suddenly, that Herewold was watching her with curiosity, and something approaching fondness. "Hush," she told the raven, and it did as she said. She stroked a thumb over its head, feeling the soft silkiness of feathers that was just a little too slippery to be real. She thought, _I don't want to let you go. Because then I'll be alone._

It was hardly ten minutes later that what seemed like the entire population of Parchfield came tromping out to meet them. Ellin had said they'd all be willing, of course, but Yennefer hadn't actually expected that to be true. It was the fear, she supposed; they were all desperate, desperate enough to give blood to a strange witch. Desperate enough to believe the solution could be just this easy. But then, wasn't she as well?

"You don't all need to do this," she told the gathered crowd. "There are other villages, other people."

"Might as well be us, though," someone said, and she saw it was Virani's sister, her left sleeve rolled up and a small kitchen knife in her right hand. "Might as well get it done now as later."

She stepped forward first and cut the same place as Ellin had, on the top of her forearm. It was a good spot for cutting—less risk of going too deep, catching an artery or an irreparable nerve. The man after her only pricked his finger, and the one after him cut a line across his palm before Yennefer could stop him, then made a wretched face as he squeezed the blood out onto the ground. 

They kept coming, dozens of them—mothers with small children who sobbed when their fingers were pricked, fathers with older sons who bore their cuts stoically, old folks leaning on canes whose skin was so thin they barely had to press before the blood was welling up. They all cut themselves, and Yennefer let them, because maybe that was part of the magic, or maybe it just made them feel better. After the twentieth or so person in line, she realized that she didn't even need to be there, but it didn't make her feel insignificant. It felt like she had solved a puzzle, figured out a trick, and as more and more blood poured into the earth, the gloomy haze that had hung over the town since she first entered it grew lighter and lighter. 

Everyone else, she could tell, could feel it too. She heard scattered laughter, smiling voices murmuring to each other, sounds she knew the town hadn't heard in the days since the curse descended.

By the time the back of the line had made its way up to her, the curse was on its last legs. "One more," she said. "Maybe two. No more than that." She held her dagger out and then almost dropped it in surprise when she saw Virani standing in front of her, clear-eyed and steady.

"I'll finish it," Virani said, and took the dagger. She lifted up her blouse and hiked up her shift, revealing her bare belly, still soft and pouchlike from its recently departed inhabitant. With one smooth motion, she cut a line across it, just below her navel, not flinching at all. Then she bent over and squeezed the cut, watching the blood drip down into the earth. There wasn't much blood—it wasn't a deep cut—but it was enough.

A bolt of lightning shot across the bright noon sky, followed by a crack of thunder so loud it left Yennefer's ears ringing. The little children, whose tears from their finger-pricks had settled into idle sniffles, burst out crying again at the noise. And the raven flew up into the air, cawing wildly as it flew in circles around the townsfolk's gathered heads.

A cheer went up then, almost a roar, and Yennefer stood there, stupefied by brightness, as an endless stream of women and a few men embraced her, some weeping, some laughing, some both. When Herewold took her arm and drew her away she didn't resist, and he said something to the villagers that made them part, making a way for her as he led her back to town and back to the inn. The raven flew behind her, cawing and cheering. It had to, of course; wherever she went, it followed.

The inn was deserted when they stepped inside, and Yennefer sat down heavily at the nearest table, beckoning the raven to perch on her hand. Herewold sat across from her, gazing at her with such kind eyes that she finally managed to pull herself back together for fear of what he might be seeing.

"Well," she said. "That was a success."

"And it worked everywhere? The curse is gone everywhere?"

She shrugged. "It should be. But you should check, of course. I need to go back to Chesna anyway for my friends' things, before I leave."

"Ah, yes," he said, and the discomfort in his voice was far more easy to deal with. "I...I believe I have some swords that belong to your witcher friend. And a dagger or two from the other one. It didn't seem prudent to get rid of them."

"A wise decision," Yennefer said. She'd forgotten about Geralt's swords; he hadn't mentioned them once. Perhaps he'd thought them lost forever, but gods only knew where he would get another silver one, so it was just as well.

Not that she was worried about Geralt or his swords, of course, she reminded herself. It was just—better, to have loose ends wrapped up. She would fetch their horses and belongings from the inn in Chesna, and portal back to her house, and then—she didn't know. She'd thought maybe lifting the curse would give her some kind of clarity, like sympathetic magic; solve one problem and another solves itself.

Well, there was one problem she could solve right now. She looked at the raven; it looked back, its birdy face expressionless.

"How do you feel?" she asked it.

"No death," said the raven. "Good blood. No death. No curse. You're happy."

"And you?" she pressed. The raven cocked its head to one side.

"Happy. Joy. Love."

She closed her eyes. _I don't want to let you go,_ she thought, and then whispered the Elder words to break the summoning spell. 

She thought it might dissolve into smoke, but it didn't. It simply sat there on her hand, watching her, but she could feel the cut string dangling loose where once it had bound securely. 

"Go on, then," she told it. "You can go where you like now. I've set you free, can't you feel it?"

"Yes," it said. "Want here. You."

"I don't think you understand," she said, feeling a frightening lurch in her stomach. "You can go anywhere you want. You're not bound to me anymore."

"Understand," it repeated. "Free. Want to stay. Can I stay?"

Her eyes blurred so fast that for a moment she couldn't see anything at all. "Herewold," she said gruffly, her voice thick. "Go away for a while."

"Of course," he said; he had been watching her discussion with the raven in absolute fascination, but he hurried away. When she heard the inn door close behind him, she lowered her face into her hand and breathed a deep, shaky breath.

"Can I stay?" the raven repeated, and she thought she heard a note of worry in its piercing voice.

"Yes," she told it, and burst into tears.

—

When she had collected herself, she gathered her things from her room at the inn and went outside to find Herewold. "Let's go to Chesna," she said, sketching a portal in front of them. "I want to get this over with and go home."

He looked at the portal with wide, alarmed eyes. "Is that...safe? I mean, for me?"

"You might throw up," Yennefer said, "but you won't die. Come on, hurry up."

They stepped through, the familiar lurch barely noticeable to her, though Herewold had to take a second with his hands on his knees before he could keep moving. "Go get the swords," she told him. "Meet me outside the—" She searched her memory for the inn Geralt and Jaskier had been staying at. "The Cat and Fiddle."

Her coin, it turned out, came in handy after all; the price of maintaining two horses for two weeks and not selling a very expensive-looking lute left unattended was steep indeed, but she didn't even try to bargain. She mounted Roach and led Pegasus, swords and lute and bags strapped to his back, and was about to ride through the portal when Herewold said, "Wait—"

She paused the horses and looked down at him. He was almost squirming in discomfort, face pinched and guilty. "What?"

"You should know," he said with obvious reluctance. "What I...what I originally promised you, for lifting the curse. The venom."

She sighed. "You don't have it," she said. "You never had it. Thydonis told you it would be a good lure for a powerful sorceress."

Herewold nodded, anguished. "I would give it to you if I had it," he said. "I swear I would."

"I believe you," she said, and wondered if he would take it as a sign of forgiveness, and couldn't bring herself to care as she rode through the portal, leaving him behind.

She emerged just outside her house and led the horses around the side, tracing the sigil to make the stables visible. It had been a long lifetime since she'd cared for a horse herself, but the motions of unbuckling their tack came easily, and she brushed them both even though they didn't need it after only a five minute walk. When she was done and they were both contentedly eating, she took the swords and the lute, walked around to the front door, and went in.

They were in the house—she could sense them right away—but not in the front room, or the kitchen. She laid her items down on the kitchen table and sat for a minute. The cat appeared seemingly out of nowhere and jumped up into her lap, purring as she stroked it thoughtlessly. The raven on her shoulder was a famliar almost-weight, even without the sensation of magical connection that had always accompanied it.

"I don't know what I want," she told it. It nuzzled its head against her cheek and said nothing, for once.

Some time later, Geralt walked into the kitchen, stopping short when he saw her.

"You came back," he said, soft and disbelieving. The lines around his eyes began to crinkle, just a little.

"It is my house," she pointed out, and he seemed to deflate immediately.

"Do you want me to leave?" He looked away as he said it, and she could almost see the weight of shame on his shoulders. It hurt her to look at it.

"Where's Jaskier?" she said instead of answering.

Despite everything, a tiny smile crossed Geralt's face. "He's in the garden," he said, still looking down. "He was worried about the plants."

Her heart seized in her chest as she stood. "Come on then," she said, and, along with the cat, he followed her to the back and out the door. Sure enough, Jaskier knelt amid the verbena with a half-empty bucket of water, sweat beaded across his forehead and dirt smeared across his hands. He looked up when they came out and his eyes widened, a delighted smile splitting his face. "Yennefer!"

"Jaskier," she said. "I brought your lute back. And your swords," she said to Geralt, "and your horses."

Jaskier stood and rushed toward her, stopping just short of an embrace, clearly uncertain of his welcome. "Does this mean...I mean, you don't have to make a decision right now, but..."

She swept him into a fierce hug and it only took him a second to respond, arms wrapping tightly around her. She buried her face in his shoulder; he smelled like sweat and dirt and herbs and salt.

"We missed you," he said softly into her ear, and she squeezed him tighter. Behind her, she heard Geralt make a quiet noise like he was choking. With a surge of effort, she made herself let go of Jaskier and turned to look at him. There was a shadow of hope in his eyes, closely guarded, and he was tense all over, awaiting her judgment. The sight of it gave her no satisfaction as it might once have.

"I forgive you," she said. "Or—no, I don't know. But I want to stay with you." She turned to Jaskier, whose eyes were suspiciously bright, and added, "Both of you."

"Yenn," Geralt said roughly, and didn't say anything else. She closed her eyes, breathing, and felt Jaskier press a gentle kiss to her cheek.

"You must be tired," he said, taking her hand and Geralt's and leading them back inside. "And from looking at you, I'm guessing you have a story to tell."

So they both let Jaskier lead them towards the kitchen, let him sit them down next to each other and busy himself cutting up cheese and fruit, feeding little bites of cheese to the cat to calm its mewing, while he drew the story from her—Herewold's wobbly bravery, and the foul taste of the curse, and the song Virani had sung for her dead baby, and the blood, and the raven. The raven she told them about last, wondering if she should keep it to herself, but it made Jaskier beam.

"So it _is_ a person," he exclaimed with satisfaction. "I knew there was something more to it."

"It grew," she said. "It didn't use to be. It just sort of...grew."

"Yes, well, people do that," Jaskier said. He glanced at where the raven was perched on the edge of the kitchen table, basking as Yennefer idly stroked it. "People grow all the time."

They ate—Yennefer surprising herself again with her ravenous hunger, tearing through the fruit and cheese and ending up fetching a meat pie from the pantry and devouring the whole thing. She rarely used portals this much, these days, and it was easy to forget what a toll it took on her.

"I want to go to bed," she announced after a colossal yawn nearly tore her jaw apart. They both looked at her with expressions of mingled hope and anxiety.

"...Alone?" Geralt asked.

"No," she said. "But just to sleep." She raised her eyebrows. "Is that agreeable?"

"Eminently so," Jaskier said, and Geralt nodded, and they followed her to the bedroom. She took off her dress and slid under the covers, Geralt joining her on one side and Jaskier on the other. She'd never been in the middle before—not by design, or at least not consciously, only that she had usually come to bed after the two of them were already in it. Being surrounded by two bodies—three, if she counted the cat at her feet—made the bed ferociously warm in a way that she could tell would wake her up sweating in a few hours, but for the moment she basked in it like a lizard on a rock.

Jaskier snuggled in behind her and wrapped an arm around her chest, but Geralt stayed a modest few inches away, looking uncertain of his welcome. She felt an urge to pull him closer and tried not to question where it came from; told herself it didn't matter. But she didn't reach for him, in the end, content with the sound of his slow breathing and the heat radiating off of him. With the way he looked at her, before she closed her eyes, like a man given some precious and fragile jewel to hold, a gift and a responsibility in one. Like he couldn't—didn't—believe his luck.

 _I forgive him,_ she thought, trying to repeat it to herself until it became true.

—

She did wake in the night, damp with sweat all over, and kicked the covers down to the foot of the bed (the cat fled with an indignant squawk as they landed on it) before shimmying out of her shift without thinking. Jaskier, who had let go of her in his sleep and rolled over, only mumbled something unintelligible and curled up more tightly, but Geralt opened his eyes, golden and shining in the darkness.

"Too hot?" he asked, and his eyes ever so quickly skimmed up and down her naked body. He hadn't looked at her like that in a long time—she hadn't been looked at like that in a long time. He was wearing only a long shirt, covered halfway down his thighs, and suddenly she didn't care about wishes, or forgiveness, or any kind of abstract nonsense; she wanted only to touch him, and feel him touch her, and to hell with denying herself.

She surged forward and kissed him, and he stiffened for a second before simply melting into her embrace, mouth opening for her to plunder, big hand skimming down her back to cup her ass. A different, better heat burst inside her like fireworks and she moaned into his mouth, grinding her hips against him.

Behind her, she heard Jaskier stir and mumble again, and then let out a surprised little "Oh—" before sitting up. Yennefer turned to look at him, leg still slung over Geralt's hip, and the flush running up his throat to his cheeks was a sight she felt she could treasure forever.

"I'll just, ah. Give you some privacy," he said, and swung his legs off the side of the bed, but before he could stand Yennefer reached out a hand to grab his shirt.

"Stay," she said, and felt her heartbeat pick up. Jaskier went very still for a moment, then slowly turned back around.

"I would be...delighted," he said, "but, ah, in what capacity? If I might ask."

She thought about it. She wasn't sure yet if she wanted Jaskier like that, though she thought she might. But it seemed—unfair to him, somehow, to just fold him into this, like he was an accessory that came with Geralt. When she fucked him—if she fucked him—she wanted to take him apart all on her own.

"Touch Geralt," she said. "And talk to me. To us."

Jaskier tossed off a sloppy salute. "I'm very good at talking," he said—Geralt snorted—and clambered down to the foot of the bed to crawl across their feet. For a minute they all shifted around to make room and undress, and then she was right where she wanted to be again, pressed up against Geralt with his hands cupping her and pulling her in, plunging into his mouth with wet claiming kisses in between breaths. His cock was only half-hard yet as she ground her cunt against it, her hips moving of their own volition as though to hold still would be torture.

She felt Geralt grunt and roll his hips back, and knew Jaskier was doing as he was told. When she leaned back a little, she saw him pressing kisses to Geralt's throat, soft and worshipful little touches of his lips. He met her eyes and grinned.

"He wants you so much," he said, and Geralt groaned, eyes fluttering shut. Yennefer could see Jaskier's hand at work behind Geralt's hips, and the sight made her shiver.

"What are you doing to him?" she said. "Tell me."

Geralt bit back another groan and she felt his cock stir against her, rising to full hardness.

"Well, I've got a finger in his ass, if that's what you mean," Jaskier said, and then did something with said finger that made Geralt positively buck up into her, his stiff cock sliding between her labia and nudging her clit, tearing a gasp from her mouth.

"That's good," she said, breathing harder, and lifted her leg to guide Geralt's cock inside her. Usually she needed a little more time, but watching Jaskier toy with Geralt, and Geralt's reactions, had left her cunt abruptly drenched and hungry. She threw her head back, panting, as Geralt slid deep inside her with one hard thrust.

"He fills you up so nicely, doesn't he?" Jaskier said, almost purring. "He's got such a lovely cock. Big enough for a nice stretch, but not unreasonable." He kissed Geralt's throat again, then nipped at it, hard enough to make Geralt moan and thrust again.

They rocked together like that for a minute, but the angle wasn't enough for what she needed. She rolled over onto her back and pulled Geralt with her, spreading her legs so he could enter her again, and crying out when he slammed home hard, making her clench tightly around him. She slipped one shaky hand down to rub at her clit, and let herself float into that rough good space of getting _fucked_ the way she had hardly ever permitted herself, insisting on riding her male lovers, pinning them down, tearing their pleasure from them at her whim. But with Geralt, now, this was what she wanted—and Jaskier's voice, words she could hardly make out anymore, thick with lust as he finger-fucked Geralt, bit his shoulder, sucked on his earlobe, did everything he could to drive him wild as he fucked her. It wasn't half working on Yennefer too, and she thought dizzily, as her climax approached, that she _was_ sure now, she wanted to fuck Jaskier—and it was that haze of fantasy, of _what would it be like,_ that pushed her over the edge and made her shout out her pleasure as she came.

Geralt let out an almost injured groan as she tightened around him, and she heard Jaskier whisper something to him—something about her, but she couldn't quite make it out, and didn't much care at the moment, not when Geralt was shaking above her and fucking her faster, now, rabbit-quick thrusts of his hips as she kept pressing on her clit, rolling downhill towards a second orgasm.

"Come on now," Jaskier said, and his voice was shaking a little. "Give her another, just like that, keep going." He pressed a hard kiss between Geralt's flexing shoulderblades. "You can do it, darling. Do you need a little help?"

Geralt grunted and nodded. "Close," he gasped, and Yennefer shook her head wildly.

"Not yet— _fuck,_ I'm almost there, don't you dare—"

Suddenly she felt Jaskier's fingers between them, wrapping around the base of Geralt's cock in a tight circle and—to judge from Geralt's hissed reaction—squeezing hard. "A little trick I learned from a courtesan in Toussaint," Jaskier said, and Geralt nodded, a little of the tension seeping out of his shoulders.

"Thanks," he said roughly, and Jaskier kissed his shoulder.

"Any time, dear. Now, I think you'd better get back to work." Jaskier withdrew then, lying down beside them, and Yennefer was vaguely aware of the wet slap of his hand on his cock as he watched them, but she didn't mind. In fact, she realized, she liked it; liked the thought of Jaskier watching her pant and squirm and fuck her hips up to meet Geralt's solid thrusts, watching her breasts heave and shake, watching her two fingers sliding over her sopping clit as she finally crested for the second time with a wail.

Geralt kept fucking her for a minute more, chasing his own pleasure and sending delightful aftershocks through her with each thrust. Her clit was too sensitive to keep touching, so she moved her hands to her tits, idly pinching her nipples, shivering at the little shocks of lightning it sent down her exhausted spine. When Geralt finally came she let out a long, satisfied sigh, feeling him spill inside her with a low, helpless moan.

"Ah, _fuck,_ " Jaskier grunted, and she turned her head to watch him come, spending over his fingers as he fucked up into his own tight fist. The sight made her tired cunt throb, satisfied but somehow still hungry. 

There was silence for a minute then, as Geralt withdrew from her and rolled over onto his back on her other side, leaving her between them again.

"Well," Jaskier said finally, "I think that was a success."

"Oh, yes," Yennefer said, smirking. "Top marks all round." She yawned, reminding her that it was the middle of the night, and why she'd woken up in the first place. She was even hotter now, dripping with sweat, and once more stuck between a human furnace and an ordinary man who wasn't exactly cold to the touch.

With another yawn, she waved a hand in the air and muttered a few words, and a cool breeze began to flow through the room. Geralt made a questioning noise and opened his eyes, but she ignored him, already beginning to fall back asleep as the moisture evaporated from her skin. She'd probably wake up again in an hour too cold this time, but that would be easily solved.

Jaskier didn't snuggle up against her this time, and she was obscurely grateful. Not that she didn't want him near, but after what they'd just done, she felt the need for at least a few inches of distance. He sprawled on his stomach, one arm stuck under his pillow, and a minute later she heard the faint and familiar whistle of his snoring.

She felt the mattress shift as Geralt turned on his side towards her, and turned her head to smile at him. He leaned in and kissed her—almost shyly, almost chaste—and then closed his eyes again and settled in to sleep, and she followed shortly after.

—

"So," Jaskier said the next morning over a breakfast of fruit and dried sausage, "not that I haven't deeply enjoyed our stay here, near-mortal injuries aside, but I think it's time we set out on the road again. Geralt has an extremely limited tolerance for being a kept man, and I myself have been cursed with an eternal wanderlust."

"Is that so," Yennefer said, and glanced at Geralt. He looked rather abashed, to the extent that his face was capable of showing such an emotion, but he didn't deny it.

"It's been—nice," Geralt said. "But I've been off the Path a long time." He tore off a piece of sausage and chewed it as he spoke. "Not much for staying in one place all the time, when there's work to be done."

"I know," she said. The question was on her lips, but she couldn't bring herself to ask it, to make herself so naked before them. "Any plans as to where you'll head first?"

Geralt looked stricken, pausing in his chewing. He glanced at Jaskier with an almost frantic look in his eyes, as though begging for help.

"We, ah," Jaskier started, and cleared his throat. "We rather thought you'd be coming with us?" He waited only a second before continuing, words spilling out of his mouth. "I mean, I don't know how keen you are on the vagrant lifestyle, camping outside and all that, but I'm sure we could spend a few more nights in inns and a few less on the open road, if you'd prefer. And we'll have to get you a horse, of course, but that's no problem, and you can ride Pegasus in the meantime—"

She cut him off, feeling warmth wash through her. "I'm coming with you."

The relief between them was palpable. "Good!" Jaskier said. "Wonderful! It really isn't as bad as all that, you know. And, oh, you could even help Geralt with his contracts! Imagine," he said to Geralt, "how easily you could slay a kikimora with magical assistance. We'll be positively rolling in coin."

"Hm," Geralt said, mouth twitching. "Wouldn't say no to some help."

"And imagine the _songs_ I could write," Jaskier went on, gesturing broadly. "The Witch and the Witcher! Fighting legendary monsters by day, sizzling between the sheets at night. The stuff of ballads for sure."

"The monsters are usually at night," Geralt said drily, as Yennefer smacked the back of Jaskier's head none too gently.

"No ballads about us fucking," she said, and took another bite of her pear. "And we can get me a horse in town, although they're going to wonder where the last one went."

Jaskier looked at her askance. "Er, where did the last one go?"

She shrugged. "Rode it to Chesna, got kidnapped, forgot about it for a while. When I checked back yesterday the innkeeper had sold it."

"Ah, well, yes, that would do it."

"Got plenty of coin, though," she went on. "I think they won't ask too many questions."

"I imagine you have that effect on people regardless," Jaskier said, his voice unexpectedly fond. She didn't know how to react to that, so she just took another bite.

After breakfast she packed what she would need—a few shifts, a few dresses, a few potions that might come in handy—and then went out back to the garden. It was in perfect condition; Jaskier must have been taking good care of it while she was away. She hadn't realized how much he'd absorbed from her childish lectures, back then.

It would maintain itself in perfect stasis, of course, once the house was empty again. Well—mostly empty, she thought, as the cat appeared out of nowhere to rub around her ankles. She crouched down to scratch behind its ears, getting a loud rusty purr in response.

"You know how to take care of yourself, don't you?" she told it as it rolled over on its back, exposing its white belly to her gentle rubs. "I know you like company, but you're a cat. You'll be fine. Just don't eat the pennyroyal."

She stayed down there for a minute more, petting the cat's soft fur, feeling an uncomplicated tenderness that was a relief after all the damned _feelings_ she'd had to have lately. She only stood up when she heard Geralt and Jaskier's footsteps behind her.

"Will that thing be all right?" Geralt asked. 

Yennefer raised her eyebrows in surprise. She would have expected that sort of concern from Jaskier, but Geralt didn't seem much for small, soft animals. 

"It'll be fine," she said. "It was fine before, and it was fine while I was gone, and it'll be fine after we leave. There are plenty of mice and baby rabbits in the woods for it to feast on."

Geralt nodded, and she thought that was all, and then was stunned speechless as he knelt down and reached out a hand to stroke the cat, tip to tail, smiling a little as it pushed up into his hand. "Never met a cat that didn't hiss at me before," he said quietly, and stood back up. "Let's go, then."

They had both already packed what little they needed—Jaskier mournfully replacing the vielle in its box in the closet, because carrying one delicate instrument on the road was already asking for enough trouble. Yennefer put three meat pies and some bread in a pouch, and then, standing by the front door, whistled for the raven. It formed itself in the air, smoke gathering together until it was a coherent shape, and perched on her shoulder.

"You know," Jaskier said, "you should probably name that thing, if it's going to stick around."

"Name?" chirped the raven. She tilted her head to nudge it gently.

"Maybe later," she said. "Soon."

As the door closed behind them, she traced the sigils to lock it and hide it, and the one to freeze time. They gathered the horses from the stables, Jaskier insisting that she ride Pegasus until they reached town and bought her her own mount, and they set off down the road. It was a cold day—autumn was coming to a close at last—and she gathered her cloak around her, Jaskier doing the same with his own. Geralt, of course, showed no sign of discomfort with the cold; she already looked forward to snuggling up to him again at night and absorbing his heat.

They hadn't gone hardly a minute before Jaskier pulled his lute off his back and announced that this journey could use some musical accompaniment, and started to strum. Geralt rolled his eyes, but only said, "Something cheery, this time," and Jaskier bowed in assent. He strummed a bit more, then settled into a tune, and started to sing. 

" _I've been a wild rover for many's a year,_ " he sang, and Yennefer couldn't hold back a small smile. This wasn't one of the songs he'd sung for them when they were children; this was the most famous drinking song in the northern realms, and she'd clapped along to the chorus a dozen times before. She glanced over at Geralt, wondering if he'd ever sung along to a drinking song. It seemed rather unlikely—witchers were rarely welcomed into taverns with much convivial feeling—but surely he'd heard it before, she thought, and sure enough the corner of his mouth was tilted up, just the slightest bit.

" _And I spent all my money on whiskey and beer,_ " Jaskier continued, his voice growing louder as he really got into it. " _But now I'm returning with gold in great store, and I never will play the wild rover no more._ " He paused and looked up at them. "And the next part is better with harmony, really, so if either of you feel like chiming in, please don't hesitate."

Geralt made a sound halfway between a cough and a snort, and Yennefer bit back another grin. It wouldn't do to reward Jaskier too much, after all, at least not so soon, or there'd be no living with him.

The chorus began— _no, nay, never_ —and they rode on, the wind rising and falling, carrying Jaskier's voice well enough that the townsfolk would probably hear them long before they arrived. She wondered idly what they would think of their resident witch taking up with a witcher and a bard; wondered if they'd assume it was some magical scheme or come to the correct conclusion. Wondered what the correct conclusion actually was—friends? Lovers? Some sort of crooked family?—and finally decided, as she heard Geralt begin to faintly hum, that she didn't need to know; that this was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> The song Virani sings is a translation of [this lullaby](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jD_bQKZgd4) by Zulya; the song Jaskier sings at the end is, of course, [The Wild Rover](https://youtu.be/_jgd07Ica5s). 
> 
> Follow me on [Tumblr](http://some-stars.tumblr.com/) for Witcher shitposts, WIP updates, occasional prompt fills, and just because I very much need people to talk to about this stupid, stupid show. :D? :D? Also, if you would like to reblog this story, you can [do so here!](https://some-stars.tumblr.com/post/626926729136603136/hope-is-a-dangerous-thing-somestars-the)


End file.
